IRELAND
Herald
By Michael Lavery
Thursday April 12 2012
IRISH clerics have rallied around a priest advised by the Vatican to take six weeks to “reflect” on his open-minded beliefs.
The Vatican’s attitude to Fr Tony Flannery is causing conflict between priests here and the Church hierarchy.
Well-known Dublin priest Fr Peter McVerry said he was “saddened but not surprised” by the Church’s actions in ending Fr Flannery’s monthly column for the Redemptorist magazine Reality. Senior clergy in Rome are understood to be annoyed by Galway priest’s views on contraception, celibacy and women’s ordination.
And today a senior Irish priest hit out at the “diktat culture of obedience to authority”, accusing the Pope and his advisers of attempting to row back on Catholic Church reforms initiated in the 1960s by Vatican II.
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